Denis Defreyne
[dəˈni] • pronouns: he/him
hello@denisdefreyne.com
+49 1573 1969 173
https://denisdefreyne.com
Berlin, Germany
I am a software engineer with extensive experience in backend and frontend development. I am comfortable with infrastructure, security, and reliability topics.
I excel at technical writing and have a solid sense of visual design and UX.
Experience
Aug 2022 –
present,
Berlin
Staff software engineer
[redacted]
- Created tooling to automate onboarding across all products of all teams
- Architected and prototyped a cross-project access management (authorization) solution
- Guided teams to adopt state-of-the-art software delivery practices (CI/CD), significantly speeding up releases and reducing overhead to a minimum
- Mentored junior coworkers to bring them to a more senior level
Jul 2021 –
Jun 2022,
Berlin
Senior software engineer
Shopify
- Prototyped a recommender system for suggested products
- Converted a legacy PHP platform into a Ruby on Rails one
Feb 2021 –
Jun 2021,
Berlin
- Sped up build pipelines and increased delivery resilience by improving developer tooling
Jul 2020 –
Dec 2021,
Berlin
Software engineer, co-founder
closecontact
- Led the technical design and implementation of a privacy-first contact-sharing solution for Berlin nightclubs
Jul 2019 –
Dec 2020,
Berlin
Senior Software engineer
BCG Digital Ventures
- Defined the technical direction for the internal tools team, striking a balance between business needs and long-term maintenance
- Migrated a legacy system onto a modern frontend stack (React and TypeScript), boosting development speed and quality
- Brought consistency to the design system, and improved accessibility
Nov 2017 –
Jun 2019,
Berlin
Senior Software engineer
Movinga
- Brought consistency to the company’s infrastructure using Terraform and Ansible, slashing infrastructure operating costs by 40–50%
- Introduced monitoring and alerting using Prometheus and Grafana
- Tightened security of applications, services, processes, and infrastructure
Jun 2013 –
Nov 2017,
Berlin
Software engineer
SoundCloud
- Built infrastructure for the On SoundCloud partner program, including a flexible logic engine to handle frequently-changing business needs
- Ran workshops around incident response
- Set up a central repository for organization-wide technical documentation
- Improved and expanded the customer support’s tooling and processes
Sep 2010 –
May 2013,
Brussels
Software engineer
MediaGeniX NG
- Expanded the broadcasting solution for VIMN subsidiaries such as MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon for divisions in Europe and Southeast Asia
2007 –
2009
Software developer intern
(various)
- At Cyan Worlds: modernized web sites, improved SEO, set up translation workflows across seven languages
- At Netlog, optimized an abuse-detection system for social networks
- At dotProjects, developed a web-based machine translation system for large documents
Core skills
Natural languages
English: fluent
Dutch: fluent
German: conversational
Programming languages
expert: Ruby, HTML, CSS
advanced: JavaScript, TypeScript, Go
intermediate: Java, Python, SQL
beginner: Rust, Clojure
Technologies
advanced: React, Ruby on Rails
intermediate: PostgreSQL, MySQL
beginner: Tableau, Node.js
Nanoc
Creator and maintainer of Nanoc, a powerful static-site generator, used at GitHub, at GitLab, at PayPal, for Prometheus, at FOSDEM, for Atom, at Disney, and in many more places.
Open-source projects
Creator and maintainer of several open-source projects, including cri, ddmemoize, and ddmetrics.
Mentoring
I have mentored a diverse group of people as part of CoderDojo, RailsGirls, and SoundCloud’s internship programs.
Public speaking
I regularly give talks, of which Code as data (2018), How to memoize (2018), and Let’s write a parser (2016) are my personal favorites.
Education
Master of Computer Science (Ghent University)
Dissertation: Design of a recommendation system for offering services on social-network sites